“Myths are things that never happened, but always are.”
This quote from the fourth century Roman author Sallustius came to mind when my daughter—a classical studies and archaeology major at Bryn Mawr College—explained why Christopher Nolan’s recent film is a bad adaptation of Homer’s epic poem, the Odyssey. Despite the poem’s origins in oral history, subject to different interpretations by the individual teller, classicists contend that a proper recitation attends to the fundamental Homeric theme of kleos aphthiton—do it in a way that delivers undying fame for its warrior protagonist, Odysseus. The imperative for this style of telling is the myth of the poem, and to glorify Odysseus for overcoming the canonical hero’s struggle is the myth of the protagonist.
Nolan’s film travels in other myths and attends to a very different theme. Instead of glorifying the hero’s struggle, Nolan uses it to create a portrayal centered on Odysseus’s seeming moral anguish. Given the fact that, at its core, the Odyssey is about a soldier’s return from combat, Nolan’s theme can be interpreted as Odysseus’s struggle with and ultimate recovery from what is contemporaneously known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Not being a classicist nor an expert on Homer’s work, I cannot assess scholarly criticism of any interpretation of the Odyssey, let alone Nolan’s. After a long Army career spanning the entirety of the United States’ post-9/11 wars with multiple returns from combat, however, and having watched Nolan’s film several times, to me the PTSD framing is incorrect. Odysseus’s struggle in the film and attendant moral anguish do not seem to be PTSD at all. Rather, they are expressions of a related but much deeper and harder-to-diagnose condition: moral injury.
What is Moral Injury?
Christopher Nolan is not the first person to look at Odysseus’s struggle in the context of moral anguish or modern behavioral health diagnoses. Preceding him was Jonathan Shay, an American clinical psychiatrist whose work with Vietnam veterans inspired him to write Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming, which associated veterans’ PTSD experiences with the events of the Odyssey. As it so happens, and unrelated to his book, Shay also coined the term moral injury, defining it through three predicates: “(i) A betrayal of what is morally right, (ii) by someone who holds legitimate authority and (iii) in a high-stakes situation.” Subsequent scholarship has clarified that “someone” includes those who witness or fail to prevent said betrayal—not just the perpetrators themselves—and describes the injury as the psychological, behavioral, spiritual, or social distress carried by the betrayal’s aftermath.
Although moral injury and PTSD can have overlapping symptoms, PTSD tends to be more of a fear-based reaction whereas moral injury is more guilt- or shame-based. Additionally, while a moral betrayal event can of course be traumatic enough to induce PTSD, there are many other types of combat trauma not involving moral betrayal that can also induce PTSD. Thus, moral injury and PTSD are distinct concepts even when they relate to the same experiences, a distinction that a careful viewing of Nolan’s film makes clear.
(How I Saw) Moral Injury in Nolan’s The Odyssey
So, what does Odysseus experience in Nolan’s film that leads to moral injury? Taking part in the ten-year siege of Troy, he is credited with the stratagem that breaks the stalemate: the Trojan horse. Most histories center on the plan’s operational success. Far fewer examine the deceit that enables it. And it is the deceit that causes Odysseus’s moral injury in Nolan’s characterization. As a fundamentally honorable man, Odysseus fully recognizes that his stratagem is a direct violation of Zeus’s Law, which—among other tenets—expects that gifts of hospitality and piety like the wooden horse statue be given in good faith. Breaking sacred law is bad enough, but to do it to create favorable conditions to destroy a city and terrorize its population is unconscionable. Odysseus feels tremendous guilt and shame as a result, and Shay’s predicates clearly apply. Ten years of stalemate and the imperative to break it constituted a high-stakes situation, and Odysseus as a king himself and one of Agamemnon’s generals was a legitimate authority whose stratagem betrayed what was morally right as set forth in Zeus’s Law.
The sincere guilt and shame that Odysseus felt did not satisfy Zeus and the rest of the Greek gods, and they exacted their revenge on Odysseus and his men on their voyage back to Ithaca. Lost at sea for the next three years, they were subjected to a variety of trials that only Odysseus survived. He ultimately washed ashore on the island home of the nymph Calypso, completely broken both physically and mentally. It took seven years for the mental wounds to fully heal, during which Odysseus self-medicated with the mind-clouding effects of the lotus flower to avoid being overcome—crucially, not with fear from the memories of what he experienced on the aborted voyage, but rather compounding guilt (represented by the goddess Athena haunting Odysseus’s memories) and shame of losing all his men. This is the distinction between PTSD and moral injury. As he healed mentally, Odysseus slowly developed understanding for why he was the sole survivor.
Full understanding came to Odysseus in the film’s final act. As Ithaca’s king, Odysseus needed to return home—which itself required an act of faith that the Greek gods would not finally kill him—to honor the commitment that his wife and son showed to Zeus’s Law during his twenty-year absence and, as the gods’ now putative agent, punish the suitors trying to steal Odysseus’s wife in marriage and replace him as king (which would have made a mockery of Zeus’s Law). Only when this punishment was levied and Odysseus’s son set up as the new king of Ithaca could Odysseus go into exile and make the necessary sacrifices to the gods to honor his men and give them peace in the afterlife.
What the Modern Military Practitioner and Veteran Can Learn from Nolan’s The Odyssey
Christopher Nolan’s film may in fact be a bad adaptation of the Odyssey, but it is the greatest allegory for moral injury and how to recover from it that I have ever seen. His theme absolutely works. If the experiences of my generation of service members are a guide, then moral injury is inherent to modern combat, and managing its effects both individually and at the organizational level will be critical for future combat readiness, especially if individuals and units have repeated combat exposure. It is essential that military leaders understand moral injury as a concept. Arguably, it is a professional duty to do so. Reading Shay’s work is one way of bettering that understanding, but so is watching Nolan’s film. It equips leaders who watch it thoughtfully to have honest developmental discussions with their subordinates to prepare for what they may face in combat or come to grips with what they already have. There are pockets where this is done well across the joint force—in my experience at West Point, the courses on Military Leadership (PL300, taught by the Behavioral Sciences and Leadership Department) and Officership (MX400, taught by the Simon Center for the Professional Military Ethic) are examples. But it should be much more widespread, and commissioning sources, later professional military education gates, and Army doctrine writers would all be well-advised to institutionalize similar programs.
This learning is something that my generation would have benefited from had it been available prior to the twenty years of wars that defined our military careers. Nolan’s The Odyssey is not my favorite movie of his (shout-out Interstellar) yet it lingered with me longer than the others and I wondered why. It was only through this self-interrogation that I homed in on the film’s other great allegory—the long way home from war—and its potential usefulness for the men and women who have gone to war and returned. I have had PTSD and (I think) recovered from it a while ago—I have not had a fear-based reaction to one of my traumatic combat experiences in quite some time. But Nolan’s film serves as a reminder that, like countless others who came home from war, there are things from those experiences that I feel residual guilt and shame for, and there is still healing to perform and my own personal god to satisfy with some metaphorical sacrifice in exile. The Odyssey is a reminder that while every day is a step closer to home, moral injury endures and many of us perhaps have not made it all the way home. I do not say this to give some maudlin, sentimental testimony or to highlight the importance of veterans’ wellness issues (very important, obviously). Rather, it is to highlight how expectations in the joint force shift generation over generation, and that the last generation’s experience should be the floor for the next. Just like Vietnam begot better awareness of PTSD in the wars that followed, the post-9/11 wars should beget better awareness of moral injury. Starting with this awareness and then deepening understanding of the concept through the study of Shay’s work or Nolan’s film will make the joint force that much stronger and more ready.
Patrick Sullivan, PhD is an academy professor and director of the Modern War Institute at West Point.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Image credit: ArchaiOptix
